Trust Me (39 page)

And then an idea shot through her, sharp as an electric shock, and she dropped her head, afraid that Richard might see the
sudden excitement in her expression. It was crazy, she thought, so crazy that it should have been impossible, but there was
a chance that it might actually work.

She took a shaky breath, trying to make her face absolutely neutral, and looked up again. “I’m sorry, Richard,” she said,
in as steady a voice as she could manage.

He looked surprised by her sudden compliance, and then he began to laugh. “Great,” he said. “I love this. But you didn’t finish.
I said ‘Richard, darling,’ remember?”

Carly steeled herself. “Richard, darling.”

“And?”

“Please forgive me,” she murmured.

“Beautiful. See how easy that was? Remember how nice you used to be?” He let go of her hair. “Now, give me my letter, babe,
and let’s finish up here.”

Carly ducked her head and reached into the bag. Feeling Richard’s eyes on her, she made a show of shuffling through the papers
with one hand. With her other hand, she reached under them, feeling around in the cavernous bottom of her bag until her fingers
touched the cell phone again. Quickly, she found the send button and pushed it.

Please work,
she thought. She was almost positive that the last call she had made had been to check her own answering machine. She held
her breath, and then, as if by magic, the phone on her desk began to ring.

She looked toward it, then at Richard. He shook his head. “Don’t even think about it,” he said. Feigning meekness, she obeyed.
After four rings, Carly heard her machine click as it answered and silently began to record.

“
R
ichard,” Carly said, raising her voice slightly, “I can’t find the letter. It’s not in here.”

Richard’s eyes narrowed. He grabbed the bag from her and dumped the contents onto the floor. The papers fell into a ruffled
heap, her lipstick rolled under the couch, and the cell phone landed next to a paperback novel under a shower of loose change.
He swept through the papers with one hand, spreading them out farther.

“You’re right,” he said. He did not look pleased. “It isn’t here. So what the fuck did you do with it?”

“I… I don’t remember.” Carly braced herself. She couldn’t give him the letter. Not yet. Not until she made him talk about
Henry.

Richard stared at her. “You don’t remember? Do you think I’m playing around here, Carly? I’m not. And I’m not going to ask
you again. What the hell is the matter with you?” He stopped. “Or do you like this? Maybe that’s it. Should I have tried this
with you a long time ago, babe? I never would have guessed.”

He reached out and ran his fingers over her swollen cheek, then raised his hand, feigning another blow. She flinched, instinctively
closing her eyes, and heard him laughing.

She opened her eyes. “Is this what you did to Henry Tremayne?”

“I didn’t do anything to Henry Tremayne. I went up there to talk to him. I wanted to have a civilized conversation. Actually,
I wanted to tell him to mind his own goddamned business.”

“You tried to kill him.”

“I did not! I was trying to make a point. I got pissed off, maybe I shoved him a little. It was an accident.”

“You tried to cover it up by dragging him inside and leaving him at the foot of the stairs.”

“What the fuck else was I supposed to do? Go to jail over something that wasn’t even my fault? I hardly touched him. I did
worse to his dog than I did to him.”

His dog
?
Samson
, Carly thought, suddenly.
Of course. The old cocker spaniel with the cracked rib.
And Richard’s hand, bandaged the day after Henry was injured. She remembered that she had sent the other dogs out to play
in the yard that evening, since Pauline was not around to protest the inevitable mud. But the old spaniel always stayed inside,
and he had probably gone to the door with Henry when Richard rang the bell. Richard must have kicked him when he tried to
defend his master.

“Samson bit you.” For some reason, perhaps hysteria, she found that very funny. Richard’s eyes narrowed, and Carly realized
her mistake when he seized her by the arms, dragging her to her feet.

“You’re laughing at me? You think this is a joke?”

“No,” she gasped. “I don’t.”

“Don’t condescend to me, Carly, or I’ll make you sorry.” He had pinned her arms to her sides, his fingers biting into her
flesh with bruising strength, and his words were hot against her face. “Or maybe that’s what you want me to do. Maybe you
do like this.”

The cold, heavy syrup of horror flooded Carly’s belly as she saw the look on his face. His mouth came down hard on hers, grinding
her lips painfully back against her teeth. She cried out in furious protest, wrenched her head to the side, and bit him hard
on the corner of the mouth.

Richard yelled and jerked his head back, swearing, and Carly saw, with brief satisfaction, that there was blood on his cheek.
She twisted away, but he grabbed her, lifted her entirely off of her feet, and slammed her back against the wall. Her head
hit the plaster with an impact that flashed stars in front of her eyes, and the air rushed out of her lungs in a huff.

He had her pinned between him and the wall, his solid, square body crushing hers, and she could feel his chest moving with
quick, shallow breaths. He reached for the neck of her shirt and ripped downward, tearing the thin cotton halfway down her
chest. Carly took a deep, sobbing breath and screamed at the top of her lungs.

Richard hit her, and she screamed again, and again, her voice smothered against the hand that he clamped over her mouth and
nose. And then, like a miracle, she heard someone pounding on her door. The knob rattled, then the pounding started again.
“Carly!”

It was Max. His voice was muffled through the wall, but she would have known it anywhere. She struggled for breath, frantically
trying to suck air through Richard’s fingers, and getting almost none. Everything around her seemed to be glowing weirdly,
and her pulse was pounding so loudly in her head that she could barely hear anything else. She couldn’t breathe, she thought,
and panicked, thrashing wildly against Richard’s heavy body. He was going to suffocate her, she thought, terrified, and she
would never see Max again. A strange buzzing warmth was creeping through her, and she suddenly felt as if she were floating.
She heard a loud crash, then another, but the sounds meant nothing to her. It was as if they were miles away.

Richard released her suddenly, and she felt herself falling for what seemed to be a long time. Then the floor was under her,
and she was drinking in deep breaths of air, and the fog in her brain started to clear.

She lifted her head shakily and saw Max—standing tall as a titan from her perspective—put his fist into Richard’s jaw with
a force that snapped Richard’s head back and seemed to lift him inches into the air. He flew backward into Carly’s end table,
knocking over a lamp and a stack of paperback books, all of which crashed down on top of him as he crumpled to the floor and
lay still.

And then Max was kneeling beside her.

“Carly?” He helped her into a sitting position, cradling her gently. “Talk to me. Are you all right?”

“You broke down my door,” she said, wonderingly. It was standing open, and through the empty rectangle, she could see the
faces of curious neighbors peering in at them.

“Damn right I did,” Max said. “Tell your landlord that I’ll pay for it.”

“And you knocked Richard out with one punch?”

“I wanted to hit him a few more times, but it didn’t work out that way.”

“I had no idea that you had such a serious right hook,” she said, and, inexplicably, burst into tears. He held her, stroking
her hair, murmuring things that made her cry even harder. She had never been so happy to see anyone in her entire life, and
she thought that she never wanted to leave the protective circle of his arms.

He put his fingers carefully under her chin, turning her face, and swore under his breath at the sight of her bruised cheek.
“I’m going to kill him,” he said grimly, and to Carly, he sounded as if he meant it. Startled, she stopped crying and took
a deep breath, trying to get control of herself. She was about to ask him if he had gotten her message, but there was a sudden
clatter of feet on the stairs outside.

Hector Gracie and a uniformed patrol officer appeared in the front doorway, and Carly stiffened, her fingers instinctively
clutching Max’s shirt. “What is he doing here?” she asked fearfully. Had he come to arrest her?
The letter
, she thought.
I have to give him the letter.

“Sssh,” Max said. “It’s all right. I called him. I heard your message on the way over.”

Gracie motioned the officer toward Richard, who was beginning to stir. “She okay?” the detective asked, looking at Carly.

“I’m fine,” Carly said. She reached into her coat pocket, pulled out Henry’s letter, and held it out toward Gracie. “This
is from Henry Tremayne. I found it in Richard’s desk. And if that isn’t enough to clear me, I think—I hope—I have Richard’s
confession on my answering machine.”

At the detective’s uncomprehending look, she explained.

“You taped him? Through a cell phone?” Gracie’s eyebrows went up, and he shook his head. “That’s a new one for me, Miss Martin.”

He picked up the cell phone from the floor and put it to his ear, listening for a moment, then shrugged. He pressed the end
button. “Where’s the machine?”

Carly pointed to her desk. Gracie walked over and scrutinized the old answering machine. He fiddled with the buttons, and
a few moments later, the tape was playing. Carly’s voice was small and muffled behind all of the foreground noise, but her
words were clear enough to understand.
Richard, I can’t find the letter.

“I’ll be damned,” Max muttered, as the recorded conversation continued.

I hardly touched him. I did worse to his dog than I did to him…

Gracie stood listening, his arms folded against his chest, his face expressionless.

Maybe you do like this
, said Richard’s voice.

Carly shuddered, and Max’s arms tightened around her. He made a sound, low in his throat, that sounded like a growl. There
was a dull thud on the tape that Carly recognized as the sound of her own body being thrown against the wall. Her scream,
remote and tinny as a neighbor’s teakettle, was abruptly cut off as the tape ended.

The machine beeped and began to rewind. The sudden silence in the room was broken by Richard’s groan, as he struggled to sit
up under the watchful eye of the police officer.

“Well,” Gracie said, and began to chuckle. “Not bad, Miss Martin. Not bad. I always did think that you were a nice lady.”

“Thank you,” Carly said. The scene at the police station was still a little too fresh in her mind for her to feel much warmth
toward the detective.

Gracie looked down at Richard. “So, guy, how about that? Beating up on old men and young ladies make you feel tough?”

“Fuck you,” Richard mumbled groggily, holding his face in his hands. He glared up at Max, who glared right back at him. “You!
You broke my jaw. I’m going to sue you for every—”

Gracie cut him off. “Sue him? I don’t think so. You’re going to be too busy to sue anybody, guy, because you are under arrest
for assaulting this nice lady. And that, I think, is only the beginning of your troubles. You have the right to remain silent.
Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney…”

Richard listened sullenly as Gracie read him his rights. The patrol officer pulled him to his feet, snapping handcuffs on
him, and Carly turned her face into Max’s chest, not wanting to see any more.

“Can you stand up?” Max asked her. She nodded, and he helped her to her feet and led her into the kitchen. He pulled out one
of the chairs. “Sit down. I’m going to get some ice for your face.”

“I don’t have any ice,” Carly said, watching him as he opened the freezer and looked inside. She never wanted to take her
eyes off of him again. Having him there, warm and solid, was like a miracle.

“You’re right,” Max said. “No ice. Not a problem, though. This will work.” He pulled out a bag of frozen peas.

Carly eyed it dubiously. “You must be kidding.”

“Brooklyn special. Hold still.”

He sat down facing her, so close that his legs were on either side of hers, and leaned toward her, applying the cold plastic
bag to the side of her face.

“Ouch,” Carly said, although she hardly felt a thing. He was looking into her eyes, and the pounding in her swollen cheek
was nothing compared to what her heart was doing. “Max, did you say that you heard my message in the car, on your way over
here?”

“That’s right.”

“But why were you coming over, if you hadn’t already heard it?”

“Edie called me to warn me that you were in trouble. She was there when Wexler saw that you’d broken into his desk.”